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The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. And even so, plenty of senior

The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. And even so, plenty of senior positions suffer from this situation as well. I'm living this hell right now.

Hamuko 6y ago
>The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  (in America) There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. Whether you work 35 or 60 hours, it’s the same pay.[a] As a result, employers don’t have to worry about overtime pay, only burnt out employees (but entry and junior levels are disposable, right? /s) [a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardless of your position.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well. I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer) dictates that 40 hours/week is the maximum. If you want to read our collective agreement, you can find it here: https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti_2020_web.pdf https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti... Working hours are on page 19 (21 on the PDF).
    - treis 6y ago
      And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make. The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday". It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.
      - Symbiote 6y ago
        Is the American developer happier in life than the Finn? Do they have time to enjoy all that extra money? The 40 hours is averaged over several weeks (normally). You can have an extra 3 hours, but leave work at lunchtime the next day.
        treis 6y ago
        The American developer can retire in 1/3 to 1/2 the time of the Finn. And yes, I'd say working a bit more for that is an obvious yes.
        gorbachev 6y ago
        It depends. You can't, if: 1. you have a chronic illness that requires a good healthcare plan to be treated affordably 2. you have a large family 3. your student debt is larger than average 4. you have a large mortgage 5. your have other financial liabilities you can't afford to handle without good paying job 6. you have no retirement savings or they are insufficient Items 1, 2, 3 and 6 are non-issues in Scandinavian countries.
        bvcvbuiy 6y ago
        The obsession of American developers with retirement tells a lot about what they think about their jobs.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    Wow. It's very much regulated here in belgium. 38 hours and 20 holidays. If you do 40 hours, you get extra holidays for those hours. It's clear in the contract how many hours you do for which pay. Working on Saturday needs to be 150% compensated and Sunday 200%, but I might be wrong on this last part.
  - ingvul 6y ago
    In which country are you working? My full-time work contract explicitly says that I will receive X EUR/year for working 40h/week. So, yes, they are paying for hours worked.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      USA. Should’ve mentioned that.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. This used to be true, but has changed in a lot of states and cities in the last decade or so. Many people still think that salaried=work as long as the boss says. In those places, being salaried doesn't mean you have to work unlimited hours with no compensation. This only applies to managers. If you don't directly manage people, you are legally entitled to overtime. Pre-pandemic, some states were cracking down on this. It's worth checking your state and city's labor laws every couple of years because things change all the time.
  - aaaxyz 6y ago
    Why would you ever sign an employment contract that does not even mention overtime?
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      It's interesting how the same situation has completely opposite implications in different countries. In my country, if the contract doesn't mention overtime, that's great, because it means the company must pay you nicely for overtime, and there is a limited amount of overtime per year. However, if it is explicitly a part of the contract, there may be more overtime per year (within some limits), and less compensation per extra hour (again, within some limits). So if you find overtime mentioned in your contract, that is a bad thing.
  - snow_mac 6y ago
    This is why being a contractor is the best idea. You need need me to work 60? I'm billing for every, single hour. 35? Great! I'm going to leave early on Friday and not check my email until Monday morning!
BurningFrog 6y ago
Then again, a competent senior engineer can easily get another job. I'm just one atypical person, but in my experience, the employer is usually more nervous about the employee breaking things off than the employee.
tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
The juniors won’t be fired either, but they don’t know that and usually get abused because of it. If a company expects you to crunch, that means there’s too much work. If there’s too much work, it’s extremely unlikely that somebody doing a decent job would be fired.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
I currently work at an org where the least experienced dev has over 10 years of experience. Management is fine knowing that we will say what's on our minds if we don't think something is being handled properly.

Hamuko 6y ago

>The "confidence" of senior people to push back is greatly enhanced by the fact that they won't be expediently fired for doing so. There's a problem with your country if you can be fired for refusing overtime.

colejohnson66 6y ago
(in America) There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. Whether you work 35 or 60 hours, it’s the same pay.[a] As a result, employers don’t have to worry about overtime pay, only burnt out employees (but entry and junior levels are disposable, right? /s) [a]: This also leads to the employer expecting one to be “on call” 24/7 regardless of your position.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. If there's no concept of overtime in most salaried jobs, there's a problem with your country as well. I'm a salaried, full-time employee and I'm paid to work 37.5 hours a week, no more, no less. And the collective agreement for IT services industry (which is what concerns me as a developer) dictates that 40 hours/week is the maximum. If you want to read our collective agreement, you can find it here: https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti_2020_web.pdf https://tietoala.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/TES__englanti... Working hours are on page 19 (21 on the PDF).
  - treis 6y ago
    And you probably get paid 1/3 to 1/2 of what a developer in the US can make. The reality of the world is that if you're the lead developer for some product you will have times that you need to work off hours. Like if production is down how can you say: "My 40 hours is up this week, I'll look at it on Monday". It's a balance. You shouldn't routinely be working a ton of nights and weekends. But sometimes shit hits the fan at inconvenient hours and you need to respond. If not, you have to have routine 24/7 coverage which gets really expensive really fast ultimately leading to lower salaries for developers.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      Is the American developer happier in life than the Finn? Do they have time to enjoy all that extra money? The 40 hours is averaged over several weeks (normally). You can have an extra 3 hours, but leave work at lunchtime the next day.
      - treis 6y ago
        The American developer can retire in 1/3 to 1/2 the time of the Finn. And yes, I'd say working a bit more for that is an obvious yes.
        gorbachev 6y ago
        It depends. You can't, if: 1. you have a chronic illness that requires a good healthcare plan to be treated affordably 2. you have a large family 3. your student debt is larger than average 4. you have a large mortgage 5. your have other financial liabilities you can't afford to handle without good paying job 6. you have no retirement savings or they are insufficient Items 1, 2, 3 and 6 are non-issues in Scandinavian countries.
        bvcvbuiy 6y ago
        The obsession of American developers with retirement tells a lot about what they think about their jobs.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  Wow. It's very much regulated here in belgium. 38 hours and 20 holidays. If you do 40 hours, you get extra holidays for those hours. It's clear in the contract how many hours you do for which pay. Working on Saturday needs to be 150% compensated and Sunday 200%, but I might be wrong on this last part.
- ingvul 6y ago
  In which country are you working? My full-time work contract explicitly says that I will receive X EUR/year for working 40h/week. So, yes, they are paying for hours worked.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    USA. Should’ve mentioned that.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  There’s no such this as “overtime” in most salaried jobs though. You’re paid just for being an employee, not for hours worked. This used to be true, but has changed in a lot of states and cities in the last decade or so. Many people still think that salaried=work as long as the boss says. In those places, being salaried doesn't mean you have to work unlimited hours with no compensation. This only applies to managers. If you don't directly manage people, you are legally entitled to overtime. Pre-pandemic, some states were cracking down on this. It's worth checking your state and city's labor laws every couple of years because things change all the time.
- aaaxyz 6y ago
  Why would you ever sign an employment contract that does not even mention overtime?
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    It's interesting how the same situation has completely opposite implications in different countries. In my country, if the contract doesn't mention overtime, that's great, because it means the company must pay you nicely for overtime, and there is a limited amount of overtime per year. However, if it is explicitly a part of the contract, there may be more overtime per year (within some limits), and less compensation per extra hour (again, within some limits). So if you find overtime mentioned in your contract, that is a bad thing.
- snow_mac 6y ago
  This is why being a contractor is the best idea. You need need me to work 60? I'm billing for every, single hour. 35? Great! I'm going to leave early on Friday and not check my email until Monday morning!

BurningFrog 6y ago

Then again, a competent senior engineer can easily get another job. I'm just one atypical person, but in my experience, the employer is usually more nervous about the employee breaking things off than the employee.

tdsamardzhiev 6y ago

The juniors won’t be fired either, but they don’t know that and usually get abused because of it. If a company expects you to crunch, that means there’s too much work. If there’s too much work, it’s extremely unlikely that somebody doing a decent job would be fired.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

I currently work at an org where the least experienced dev has over 10 years of experience. Management is fine knowing that we will say what's on our minds if we don't think something is being handled properly.